This is a concept that may very well solve alot of problems with this MUD... but probably wont happen very soon...

Alot of the complaints I see are over fight mechanics, gear being too high grade, quests being stupidly over-rewarding, zones taking too long...

Much of this is from people trying to make the game better by making it more soloable or small group oriented by constantly 1-uping gear with new zone/content additions... which as a MMORPG, this game should be able to tolerate effectively... the problem though is there isnt any progression past reaching level 50 and gear grinding...

I know alot of people may disagree with many of the suggestions or ideas I will present, but I think building on these ideas will be more constructive than telling me how wrong and stupid I am. As a small player base community, it takes a large amount of work from everyone to give a greater return in how this game plays out. Many other MMORPG's have hugely limitless progression in them.. Games like World of Warcraft or Everquest, they constantly introduce more and more content, something thats difficult here but still not non-existant. And with the introduction of new content, they generally introduce progressively harder, more complex, more enjoyable things.. like raising level caps with each big expansion, jumping gear boundaries and increasing the benefits of gear exponentially for each 10 level tier.

What we don't see in toril is this progression idea, but in order to introduce progression, we need less limiters... the level cap of 50 is way too easy to reach for a maximum level.. especially considering many classes can do this and raise their buffer xp exceedingly fast... people like Lase and Pidibeple and Lilithelle have capped their xp on their main characters and even some others. When we get to level 50, everything becomes a gear grind to get equipped for Tiamat, or to make every other zone seem TOO easy. In the content aspect, every new area, all the new gear, has to come in for level 50's or lower... theres nothing beyond 50 for us, and it doesnt look like there will be in the near future, as the way this game looks now... I have hope though with 2 new coders...

A personally prefered solution which many people have brought up before, many people have argued over before, and many people have shot down before, is the idea of raising the level cap in the game... but by doing this we can justify the expansion of mob levels, the addition of new more "elite" level or "epic" level spells and abilities.. the increasing of item stats as compared to the previous "end game" gear... and we can put an end to all the complaints about whats currently "unfair" or "imbalanced" gear...

With tiamat being a level 50 zone, and requiring 20-30 players to complete, less now that so many people have tiamat gear in large amounts.. I think this is a good place to cut off the limits that are in place, and make tiamat the lvl 50 tier goal... and begin to expand to a lvl 60 tier goal, with new level caps in the future...

Some of my justifications for this idea are as follows:Tiamat is one of many high end concepts in the Faerun storyline, there are other fantasy creatures and places that are more frightful that can be introduced, but theres no way to do it with such tight restrictions, the first thing that got me thinking about this, is at one point I wanted to try expanding the Nine Hells areas... As there are NINE hells, the deeper you go, the more frightful and dangerous they should be and that is how they are portrayed in the fantasy worlds that many writers have created that mention them... Avernus is a lvl 45-50 zone already, The entrance to Bel (the second of the nine hells) is inside of the top tiamat grid, already requiring 20-30 players to access, and 1.5-3 hours of killing and grinding and deaths to make it to. So we cant very well put in a new hell, even though Bel isnt so much a chaotic place as some hells as what im told is supposed to be a kind of market/gathering level of the hells, it should still be rated as an area for people that are higher level than the rating of the first hell (Avernus) which would imply it should be level 50+.. But as lvl 50 is the cap, we cant expand beyond that scope of content, leaving us at an eternal deadlock...

I know that nothing can be done until someone comes forward willing to work on this, and as I am now I can't yet offer my services to such a project. But I'm teaching myself the coding required for such things, and when I'm able, I would really love to help expand the game in this way. But I think something needs to start the game's progression into motion now, rather than in a couple years when we might have even LESS of a game to work with.

this thread is hurt, its screaming, its in so much pain, it wants help, it wants you to look at it, its shouting, the noise is blood curdling, its saying... its saying... its say... ing.. README README README README README

I don't think raising the level cap will change that much. I've played other games before and basically all that happened was that:

a) everybody started to xp all their toons to the new level cap

b) only lvl 60 zones would be done, because all lower level eq went suddenly obsolete

On this mud that basically means that we'd lose a lot of content, and that would seem a waste. I think area makers are doing the best they can to provide new content, it just takes a lot of time to create a new zone (I know, I'm making one and it take way more time then you'd expect). In terms of content I know every reasonable attempt at making a new zone is welcomed.

The other thing that helps is if the game mechanics get fixed and expanded. A lack of coding staff has slowed that to a halt for a long time, but maybe that will get better now that fresh ones have arrived.

EDIT: I do think that in designing new game mechanics and zones, or maintaining old ones, is that we should more and more keep in mind that our pbase has less time, and is smaller. Adding 5 hour zones is less usefull then. I think we have to start thinking about being able to do big zones (Tiamat and Troll King come to mind) in parts. Get tokens after the midfights (Like Dis, or the second to last level of TK) which will pop a portal from the zone entrance to the second part, of clear out the first part.

I like Alternative Advancement (EQ) or ImperialDiku's version of exping and putting exp points into skills. For example, prestige points (which we do get per exp point or old RP tokens) could be put into skills, such as resistances or spell focus to make our characters better. If I were a forger, here is how I would implement it:

100 points = 1 % resist or 1% spell focusTokens for 50 pts or 100 pts can be put in crappy zones so people have a reason to do it.People will want to do exp (even with lowbies) to get prestige points.

Also, I don't like how every quest makes you turn in shitty items to make god items, like Randar's, new Gith etc. I only did it because I had to figure out how to get rid of shit from my bags that nobody ever used and I'm sure many people who have made zones did the same. I said back in the past we should have 3 progression tiers of zones by time and difficulty and the gear should be compared and leveled off between each.

Tier 1:Crypts/TF/Jotunheim/Muspelheim/SF/Lizard Marsh/Flames/Demi

Tier 2:Izan's/SM/Manscorps and Seers

Tier 3:Hulburg/BC/Trune/Dragonspear

Please don't argue about what should be in what tier because that's a pointless conversation. I just want to point out that this is what my implementation of the game should have been and makes sense for "that progression feel"

Pril wrote:Allow people to multiclass. I know Malia would love to be a rogue/ele/chanter/illus!

multiclassing is a great to play around with, but it eventually kills zoning.. just look at ddo.. there are some great multiclass builds and builders but 90% of the multiclassers are retards that just piled on the classes without thinking, ending up with extremely gimped chars. imagine if you will a multiclass of rogue + mage... it would = no high level spells, and just tell me, how often do you cast fireball (a spell that supposedly scales up as you gain class levels) nowadays?

raising the level cap is a terrible idea.. it.. feh i'm not gonna go into it because its never gonna happen, suffice to say that the amount of work required for this would be huge.

and brian, why would you ever do tier 1 and 2 zones when the good eq only comes from tier 3?...

as for quests, i for one spent weeks locating random keywords and looking through kegor's zstat of multiple zones to find the precise items that would fit with the overall theme of the quest, i know quite a few other writers did that as well. not everyone piles in crap they have in bags *cough*conquest set*cough* into a quest just to get rid of them.

Thanks to Brian for your enlightening ideas and input.. your the only one that realized the purpose of this thread instead of shooting down ideas without trying to modify them or provide constructive input or ideas/alternatives... Honestly it sickens me that 95% of the people that monitor the forums cant do anything but complain when someone tries to improve on the game they(the forum monitoring people) don't even play anymore or with any viable sense of regularity..

The idea behind raising the level cap, contrary to what most people have concluded without really reading what I said, is to enable the expansion of zone mechanics and difficulty/challenge versus adding over-powering death grinds of rinse-repeat crap like has been introduced over and over for lvl 50 zones that are constantly increasing in average completion time.

I am more than willing to expand on my ideas as to the potential from raising the level cap, but I think you all need to read my first post about 10 more times until you find the part that already justifies(at least partially) the level issue and then provide CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on it in a mild mannered way that does not turn this thread into a rant. I might convince myself that its worth my time and effort to draw a full layout of the concepts after i get some sleep... so feel free to check back in about 20 hours or so for that...

All in all I find the response to this thread disappointing and I no longer expect anything out of it other than to sort my own ideas and possibly get a areas/coding member to catch a glimpse of something to use as an idea for upcoming content..

Pril wrote:Allow people to multiclass. I know Malia would love to be a rogue/ele/chanter/illus!

multiclassing is a great to play around with, but it eventually kills zoning.. just look at ddo.. there are some great multiclass builds and builders but 90% of the multiclassers are retards that just piled on the classes without thinking, ending up with extremely gimped chars. imagine if you will a multiclass of rogue + mage... it would = no high level spells, and just tell me, how often do you cast fireball (a spell that supposedly scales up as you gain class levels) nowadays?

raising the level cap is a terrible idea.. it.. feh i'm not gonna go into it because its never gonna happen, suffice to say that the amount of work required for this would be huge.

and brian, why would you ever do tier 1 and 2 zones when the good eq only comes from tier 3?...

as for quests, i for one spent weeks locating random keywords and looking through kegor's zstat of multiple zones to find the precise items that would fit with the overall theme of the quest, i know quite a few other writers did that as well. not everyone piles in crap they have in bags *cough*conquest set*cough* into a quest just to get rid of them.

Not everyone does, but it sure seems like they do. Dscale robes is a great example.

You can put incentives into tier 1 and 2 zones to make people go back. I would do:1. Prestige tokens, but make prestige worth something (+ spell focus or resists comes to mind)2. Quest items like they do now3. Some sort of grind/farm for superior items, like Shroud in DDO4. Rare novelty items or consumables.